Holding your cellphone while driving for navigation is illegal, California court rules

Think it’s all right to hold your cellphone while driving, as long as you’re just looking at a navigation app? Think again.

A state appeals court ruled Tuesday that the state law prohibiting drivers from texting or talking on a cellphone while driving also makes it illegal to hold a phone to look at a map on the screen.

The driver doesn’t need to be swiping or tapping at the navigation application to break the law, the court ruled. Just looking at the map on the screen, with the phone in hand, can justify getting pulled over to be ticketed.

When legislators adopted the current state law prohibiting drivers from “operating” a cellphone while driving, they did so “to reduce distracted driving resulting from advancements in modern phones and to encourage drivers to keep their eyes on the road,” the court of appeals ruled.

Mounted phones, and drivers operating them with a single swipe, are exempted, according to the decision, but looking at a map while holding the phone would violate the current law, the court ruled.

“Allowing a driver to hold a phone and view a mapping application, even if not touching the phone’s screen, would be contrary to the Legislature’s intent,” according to the ruling.

The court decision came after Nathaniel Gabriel Porter was ticketed after looking at a mapping application while holding his phone in his left hand and driving. Porter contested the ticket, but lost his initial court appearance and was ordered to pay the $158 fine, according to the court decision.

Porter appealed the decision with the appellate division of the Santa Clara County Superior Court and the decision was reversed, with the superior court at the time ruling that “operating” a cell phone required “active use or manipulation of the device.”

“Merely observing GPS directions on the phone does not constitute the kind of active use or manipulation to trigger an infraction,” the court ruled at the time.

But the California Court of Appeal for the sixth appellate district disagreed, and reversed the decision Tuesday, stating in its opinion that the law as written, and intended, says that looking at and holding the phone while driving is a violation.

The current version of the law, adopted by the Legislature in 2016, was introduced after a previous court decision also raised questions about California’s version of the law regarding phones and driving.

That case also arose when a driver was found guilty of violating the law because he was looking at a map on his phone while driving. But when the case reached the court of appeal, it interpreted the word “using” in the law’s language as prohibiting listening and talking while holding a cellphone and driving.

That interpretation, according to the court’s written decision, was because the state law at the time stated phones had to be used in a way that allowed for “hands-free listening and talking.”

In 2016, the law was amended, with legislators pointing out that cellphones now acted more as “pocket-sized computers” and the law was too narrow.

In issuing its ruling on Tuesday, the California Court of Appeals noted that, when the current law was being drafted, the Assembly Committees on Transportation and Appropriations concluded that the new law would prohibit wireless phones from being used “for any purpose” while driving, and would include “all distracting mobile device-related behavior.”

That would include playing games on cellphones, browsing the internet, and under the recent ruling, looking at a map on the phone’s screen while holding the device.